Port Authority awards two more contracts for cleanup of former Jeep factory site

The Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority has awarded two more contracts for cleanup at the former Jeep factory site in central Toledo, including one for remediation of oily soil and another for demolishing old pavement and building foundations.

Port directors voted Thursday morning to accept low bids of $1,387,709.75 from Steve A. Rauch, Inc., of Dayton for the pavement and foundation demolition on the south end of the property, and of $51,433.72 from Enviro-Core, of Plain City, Ohio, for the soil work near the former Mather Building location to the north.

Both contracts will be funded from state and federal grants the port authority obtained to clean up the 111-acre site at 1000 Jeep Pkwy. that it bought a little more than a year ago for $95,000 from a Chrysler Corp. liquidation company.

The grants also will provide $350,000 for the port authority to buy petroleum treatment material from Lambda Bioremediation Systems, Inc., of Columbus. Enviro-Core will oversee that clean-up, but under the terms of the Clean Ohio Revitalization Fund grant involved the project, the firm could not buy the material and mark-up its price to the port authority.

Port President Paul Toth said the oil treatment takes between three and six months to work.

Approval of the Rauch contract followed extended discussion because the low bid was nearly $500,000 below the closest competing proposal and less than half of the highest bid, prompting some board members to question whether it was a low-ball.

Mr. Toth said Rauch appeared to have under-bid its competitors largely because it owns its own concrete-crushing equipment, whereas other bidders would have needed to rent such machines. The use of such equipment represents 75 to 80 percent of the contract’s value, Mr. Toth told the board.

The site “is nothing but a big mass of concrete slabs and foundations,” Mr. Toth said, along with the remnants of underground pipes to the buildings Chrysler Corp. tore down before it sold the property.

Matt Sapara, the port authority’s vice president of operations and development, added that several Toledo-area firms that have their own crushers reviewed the project but did not submit bids, possibly because their equipment was already deployed at other sites.

Earlier this year, the port authority spent $340,000 in federal funds, passed through by the city of Toledo, to remove soil contaminated with trichloroethylene from part of the former Jeep site.

The port authority plans to make the entire site available for redevelopment once the cleanup is complete.